View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many billion people can the earth sustain, theoretically?

2. Where do tangible phenomena evolve, according to consilience?

3. What evolution creates culture?

4. What role does Wilson ascribe to human nature?

5. What do modern technologies give humans the ability to choose?

Short Essay Questions

1. What role does the incest taboo have in genetic and cultural development?

2. Where does ethics come from, in E.O. Wilson's account?

3. What is volitional evolution, and what does Wilson say are its effects?

4. How does postmodern art resist consilience, in E.O. Wilson's account?

5. What does Wilson say is the relationship between human genetics and the development of culture?

6. What is the difference between nurturists and hereditarians in describing how culture evolves?

7. What are the two branches of anthropology Wilson describes, and what question does he say they both fail to answer?

8. What social science does Wilson credit with coming closest to consilience?

9. How does Wilson describe the universality of art?

10. What is the consilient view of religious ethics?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is consilience a project for government planners or for university budgets? Is Wilson advocating a role for consilience in government or in education?

Essay Topic 2

Is there a contradiction in how Wilson distinguishes between the social sciences and natural sciences, and yet argues for the overlap between all forms of knowledge? Is he saying that branches of knowledge are distinct, or not? Is he saying that all branches of knowledge are linked or not?

Essay Topic 3

How would you respond to a reviewer who wrote that after Wilson leaves his discussion of biology and reductionism, which were his fields of training, he loses authority, and ventures into fields he is not expert in, where his ideas about art and religion are off-base, and his argument about objectivity is tautological. Is this a fair critique?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 730 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample